KerbalHDR: A simple utility to enable Unitys internal HDR pipeline in KSP.

[R-T-B]

First off, lets go over what this plugin is NOT.

1.)  It does NOT make your display magically HDR.

2.)  It does NOT automagically output HDR (it instead renders it internally in the games pipeline and sends it out to whatever you have).

3.) It does NOT require an HDR display for some of the benfits (though that would be helpful for full effect).

4.)  It does NOT play nice with kerbals built in MSAA (antialiasing) modes.

It DOES:

1.)Enable better color gradient handling

2.) Enable better highlight handling

3.) Work well with HDR displays and an autoHDR algorithm (such as what is now shipping in the Windows 11 dev builds) to give good quality HDR output.

4.)  Eat a bit more vram than standard rendering.

5.) Allows modifying TUFX Paperwhite nits in HDR mode (this is how I use it).

If you want this, setup is simple.  Unlike prior mods that turned on this mode, this one features no extra baggage.  There is just a config file in the zip folder that you edit with two properties.  I'll quote the readme for that part:

Quote

A simple plugin to enable HDR rendering internally in Kerbal Space Program There are two parameters to set in GameData/KerbalHDR/Config/KerbalHDR.cfg

UseHDR = boolean [True/False] Sets whether HDR rendering is used, default true.

PaperWhiteNits = UInt [non-decimal positive number] Calibrates the brightness of the HDR, defaults to a resonable 200nits for paperwhite.

So download, extract to GameData, set settings and go.  If you like, keep.  If you don't, thow away.  Simple.

License is GNUv3 GPL.  Source is at Github here.

Releases here.

No screenshots since KSP screenshots do not capture HDR anyways, though I am open to nomininations if you can find better gradient handling before/after instances.

This is a very low priority project vs Kopernicus, but it works for me and I actually use it, so it will probably be kept working.  Tested on a 55" LG B9 OLED in HDR mode with Windows 11 AutoHDR.

Thanks for reading and hope you find this useful.

Edited July 28, 2021 by R-T-B